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I wish I had a tripod with me. And I should've used manual focus that time to fix it on a particular point.

Guys, instead a Raynox-DCR 250, I'd suggest you to buy the Marumi DHG achromats +3 or +5, depending on the magnification you need. I got two of these for about $55 last year (kinda got lucky on ebay). But, check ebay and you'll find loads of people selling this one.

The reason I suggest Marumi over Raynox is because Marumi is a little better than Raynox in the corners (vignetting and soft). The disadvantage is that Raynox 250 offers +8 which is not offered by anyone else. I have personally not tested this but know someone who has and I value his recommendation a lot. He's kind of the macro guru :D.

Anyway, here's one from me. It has been my wallpaper for a long long time, but had not uploaded it last week. What do you guys think?

HW, I think the softeness on the sides is not a glaring issue with Raynox. At least that's what I saw from couple of test shots.

Here's an entire frame (The fine mesh in front of a computer speaker)


This is the center - 100% crop


This is the top right, 100% crop.


We can see that there is some CA but it is not very soft compared to center. I haven't seen images off a Marumi macro lens, any test shots? I love magnification so I would still pick Raynox stupid:

Excellent shot by the way!

Clevermax,
There's no EXIF, may I ask what FL were these shot on? Raynox are optimized to be used at slightly longer focal lengths I think. At shorter FLs, it vignettes quite badly. I do not have a controlled test like yours but I'll post some photos later in the night that I have made with Nikon 75-240 and marumi achromats.

Wonderful shots,clevermax!!

May be this helps:

Wonderful Photos: How to Increase your Depth of Field by Focus Stacking

The exif is
1/2s, f/18, ISO100 @200mm

Of course there is severe vignetting at lower focal lengths. But what is the use of a lower FL with this? You won't get any magnification at all. Will check an revert below what FL vignetting starts. At least there is no vignetting with my 50mm and my 70-210mm lenses. There is vignetting with my kit lens 18-55mm.

Thanks!! I was looking for a free focus stacking program.. will try this.

The general consensus is that you need an DSLR for low light images but for an amateur even a good point n shoot is more than enough to get decent low light / high ISO images

Shot with Canon Powershot S90 at iso800 f2 1/20..pp in CS5

Piazza San Marco, Venice

This pigeon was patient enough with me till I framed it.

I used CombineZM to focus stack 4 individual shots, here's the result..


This is what we're looking at


It does the job really well, only issue is, the processing is a bit time consuming with my 16MP images.

Excuse me for the bad subject, I couldn't wait to try the software :) Thanks white-rabbit.

Disclaimer : This is a very amateurish attempt at both clicking and processing

Location : Thrissur , Kerala
On : May 1st , Thrissur Pooram
Using : Nikon D3100

Super Moon Cropped and Up Close and a Hand Held shot.

Because +8 is a lot and when combined with a long FL you'll get high magnification. Eventually you'll get bored and would want to zoom out, in that case, there may be vignetting. But, at around 200-300mm the DCR-250 works quite well.

I do not have test photographs and I am not particularly happy with the following shots (they were hand-held), but they should give you an idea about Marumi as well. I am not sure about magnification though. The flowers are quite small.

These are excellent shots HW! I particularly like the color combination of of the flowers and the bg!

You're right, eventually you feel like using lesser magnification and compose shots like what you've shown. But anyhow I am planning to use it with my 50mm or 70-210 only so there won't be a vignetting issue. With kit lens at lower FLs, the frame really shrinks with very opaque vignetting. But lesser the FL, we have more control on DOF.

Thanks man :). I liked the combo, but somehow didn't like the sharpness (handheld + slightly high ISO). I am really missing a tripod, need to get one soon. You're right about more control on DOF. Lesser the FL, lower the magnification and more DOF. So, that way you'd have more control. Focus stacking will look good if done well, but it has some challenges of change in magnification etc. But the tools should take care of it. I used a trial version of Helicon Focus and found it to be quite good, give that a shot as well.

A day before Supermoon: 1/25sec, F16, ISO 100, EV -1.7, 300mm, spot metering. Processed in Adobe Camera RAW, cropped using PS CS6 Beta.